Juan David Ochoa was born on April 13, 1946 in Medellín, Colombia. He was the oldest of Don Fabio Ochoa’s sons and together with his two brothers he was one of the leaders of the Medellin Cartel.
On February 16, 1991, he turned himself in to the authorities and paid five years in prison, which is nothing compared to the other drug lords of the time, being released on July 29, 1996.
After leaving prison he dedicated himself with his brother Jorge Luis to business activities and to continue with the family tradition of horse breeding. He is one of the few drug traffickers who could calmly enjoy his fortune.
On July 25, 2013, he would die naturally from a heart attack.
¿How did Juan David Ochoa Begin in Drug Trafficking?
For some people, Juan David was sent to the United States by his father Don Fabio Ochoa Restrepo with two purposes, both noble and related to their business facets: To open a restaurant similar to the one he had in Medellín and to purchase horses to be trained as paso fino horses.
Others say that he entered the United States at the request of his uncle Fabio Restrepo Ochoa, undercover as a student commissioned to start the drug distribution network brought from Colombia.
The truth is that in 1979 he was involved in the introduction of 550 kilos of cocaine in the American Union through the State of Florida by using a network they called “La Mina”. A few years later, Juan and his brothers joined Pablo Escobar Gaviria to consolidate the Medellín Cartel.
Juan David Ochoa and his Participation in the Medellin Cartel
According to an informant who declared during the investigations about the degree of participation of Juan David, the tasks related to the network were shared with his brothers according to the abilities of each of them: “Juan David would set the standards to be followed; He was the visionary, Fabio planned the operations, Jorge Luis made the contacts “.
Juan David Ochoa and The Group Death to Kidnappers
On November 12, 1981, a key event occurred in his life, such as the kidnapping of her sister Martha Nieves Ochoa Vásquez, who was 26 years old, by the armed leftist group M19, who asked for her release the amount of 1.2 million dollars.
This plagiarism caused in the first place a repudiation of the Cartel of which the brothers were part and whose immediate response was the creation of the armed group Death to Kidnappers (MAS) pioneer group of the paramilitary movement in Colombia.
It was a set of 2,000 elements organized and armed both by individuals acting within the law as entrepreneurs, ranchers, and outside it especially drug traffickers with the aim of acting against irregular groups dedicated to kidnapping, linked to organized crime or with groups with political purposes in the absence of forceful actions by the country’s institutions.
Juan David Ochoa Goes to Prison
After having been demonstrated his active participation in the activities of the Medellín Cartel, he was sentenced by the Colombian justice.
His sentence was reduced substantively by submitting to the procedural benefits derived from a law promulgated by the government of the then President of the Republic of Colombia César Gaviria Trujillo, for what he ended up serving just 5 years in prison, which did not correspond to the magnitude of the crimes committed in addition to saving himself from the dreaded extradition to the United States.
According to Juan David’s relatives , many of the accusations made against the drug lord were unfounded, since he was the least implicated in the facts attributed to them.
Juan David Ochoa’s Death
Juan David Ochoa Vásquez, died by natural causes on July 25, 2013. Cardiac arrest, was established as the cause of death in the death certificate written in the clinic of his hometown.
During his funeral, his widow Sonia Helena extended for 45 minutes with a speech where she referred to Juan as an exemplary father, devout man, exemplary brother. At no time did she refer to his role as a criminal, the author of multiple criminal acts and therefore persecuted by the authorities both in her country of origin Colombia, and the United States.